Summary: Everyone has bad days. Everyone stumbles. Even the best of us fail. What will you do?

I had a friend in college who used to say, "get behind early, that way you have plenty of time to catch up."

His philosophy was supported by the assumption that nobody could keep up. You might as well fall behind in a way that makes sense.

Right? Maybe.

It does stand to reason that nobody succeeds at everything all the time. We all fail and we all get discouraged. The trick is not in succeeding all the time, but in knowing how to treat our failures.

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

Paul makes a great point of illustrating the difference between acts of righteousness and acts of wickedness in the former passage. He lists out 15 different kinds of sinful behavior and 9 virtues we call the Fruit of the Spirit. He says:

• Don’t do the sinful stuff

• Do bear the fruit of the Spirit

• If we do the sinful stuff, things that please our flesh, we are sowing seeds of destruction and our spirits will be ravaged

• If we sow fruit of the Spirit we will reap eternal life

Verse 7 warns us of what many call the law of sowing and reaping. When we sow seeds of destruction with the expectation that God will bail us out, we are mocking Him. We are treating Him with contempt. I like the way the New English Translation says this:

Do not be deceived. God will not be made a fool. For a person will reap what he sows, (Gal 6:7)

So we are called to abandon acts that fulfill our sinful inclinations. Instead we are called to invest in the righteous behavior that is described in the Fruit of the Spirit.

When we quit trying to make a fool out of God and do what is right, then we are sowing seeds of eternal life.

Let me be clear, your salvation is bought by Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross, you cannot buy it with good works. However, every time you sow a virtue, you reap a crop of eternal, living value, as certainly as sowing sin does supernatural damage.

Our souls are bought by Christ, but our actions are not irrelevant. There is eternal, living value in the good you do.

• So we must persist

• We must have spiritual and physical stamina

• We must endure

Like the song that Irma sings, Thank You, we never know how much good can grow from the good we sow. It may seem small to us, even pointless, but God has a use for every good work you are called to do.

Paul says don’t give up

It is hard, there is no doubt about that. In Galatians alone, Paul talks about several spiritual hurdles he had to jump in order to persist in the faith.